1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus including a liquid ejecting head that ejects liquid through a nozzle opening, such as an ink jet recording head.
2. Related Art
One typical example of a liquid ejecting apparatus including a liquid ejecting head that discharges (ejects) droplets through a nozzle aperture by causing pressure fluctuations in liquid within a pressure generation chamber, the liquid ejecting apparatus being capable of discharging various kinds of liquid from this ejecting head, is an image recording apparatus that records information by ejecting ink and causing it to reach a recording sheet or other media as an ejecting target (recording medium), such as an ink jet recording apparatus (hereinafter a printer). In recent years, such a liquid ejecting apparatus has been applied in various kinds of manufacturing equipment, in addition to the above image recording apparatus. For example, in equipment for manufacturing a display, such as a liquid crystal display, plasma display, organic electroluminescent (EL) display, or field emission display (FED) (surface emitting display), the liquid ejecting apparatus is used as one for ejecting various kinds of liquid material, such as color material or material of an electrode, to a region where pixels are to be formed, a region where electrodes are to be formed, or other regions.
With the above recording head, failure, such as defective ink discharging, may originate from ink thickening and sticking caused by natural evaporation or pressure loss caused by accommodation of pressure fluctuations of bubbles entrained in ink.
To prevent such defective ink discharging, various maintenance processes are carried out. One example recording head capable of carrying out a maintenance process is the one configured to forcefully remove thickened ink or bubbles entrained in ink by providing pressure fluctuations (pressure changes) within a pressure generation chamber by driving a pressure generating element and discharging droplets through a nozzle aperture onto an ink receiver for receiving discharged ink without recording information on paper (hereinafter referred to as flushing) (see, for example, JP-A-2009-73074).
Unfortunately, with the above recording head, if pressure fluctuations provided to the pressure generation chamber by flushing are small, it is difficult to sufficiently expel bubbles, so there is a problem in that ink may be wasted. If a rapid pressure change is provided to the pressure generation chamber, a free surface (meniscus) of ink within a nozzle aperture after discharging of ink may be destroyed and bubbles may in turn be captured in the pressure generation chamber, and this may increase defective discharging.